The Heartbreak of Being There
© John McManamy
One of the cruelest aspects of mental illness is the incalculable damage it inflicts upon unsuspecting families. Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters - these tend to be the forgotten parties.
From time to time, I get emails from family members or friends of those who are depressed or bipolar, and invariably I wind up saying: "The best thing [your husband, child, etc] has going for [him or her] is you."
This came through loud and clear when I visited a personal website called Living with the Dragon. Kristall, a single mom with a small son, had the mixed blessing of falling in love with Mark, not yet diagnosed bipolar. Following an episode in which he went off into the night with his father's shotgun, he was misdiagnosed as depressed and given Prozac. He soon went manic, then manic with mixed features. One night, he turned up on Kristall's door in a rage and broke three of her ribs, then overdosed on Ativan. Kristall had seen something on Oprah about bipolar,and with this knowledge she succeeded in getting Mark correctly diagnosed. That was two years ago, with many meds changes to follow. Though Mark was by no means fully stabilzed, he and Kristall married in May, 1999.
"People ask me," she writes, "why I choose to stay with him through his pain, hostility, and anger at his disease, and all I can say is that I love hem and try not to get his illness confused with him. He is a wonderful, creative man, an excellent stepfather, and for the most part (lol) a very good husband."
A new book, The Burden of Sympathy by David Karp (Oxford, New York) at last tells of mental illness from the point of view of the families. Listen to his account of one distraught mom:
"As she continued to detail her son's increasingly strange, destructive, and threatening behaviors, Leslie tried to convey just how incredibly awful she found the unfolding of her son's illness. At various points she said: 'Sometimes I think it would be easier if he had cancer. His disease is so dreadful.' ... 'I can't believe it's my life, my sons's life.' 'We don't have a life.' 'I just look at him and my heart breaks all the time.' 'It's always on my mind. It's my existence. I am obsessed with my son's illness. His illness is my life.'"
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